Decorative
Initials font consists of characters which combine basic letter forms with
artistic embellishment, often in the form of floral or geometric patterns used as
a background or intertwined with the letter. Decorative Initials have their origins
in medieval manuscript decoration where complex and colorful characters
were used to make a manuscript page more attractive. Most Decorative Initials fonts
have their origins in the adaptation of this medieval concept to early typography,
limiting them to complex two-color patterns, though in some cases these might be
decorated after printing. Decorative Initials fonts are sometimes referred to as 'Drop Caps'
because they are 'dropped' into a page of text.

ecause
Decorative Initials characters are far more complex than the characters in a regular
font, they present design problems and may present some difficulties for the
end-user as well. This is particularly true when dealing with True Type fonts
because of the limitations built into that format. All of the difficulties of
designing Decorative Initials originate in their complexity. Characters in digital
fonts are made up of points and vectors. A truly
detailed initial may require hundreds of points, and in some cases even thousands.
With an original font this can be controlled to some degree by making the characters
less complex, but if you are
adapting a font from a historical source (like many of the Scriptorium Decorative
Initials fonts), the original source material may be too complex to simplify
significantly. With all types of fonts complexity and large numbers of points means
that the font will require more memory. This may create problems on both Macintosh
and PC computers which do not have sufficient memory or where programs are not assigned
sufficient memory to render the fonts on the screen. Similar problems may occur
with printers which lack the memory to download these complex characters.
And in most cases the more complex characters you use in a document the more problems
you will run into. Usually font memory problems will be manifested by characters not
printing or appearing on the screen in larger sizes. These problems are worse with
TrueType fonts, because operating systems set an absolute limit on the complexity
which a character can have. This limit may make it impossible to use some fonts at
all.

here are
only a few ways to deal with the problems of complexity in Decorative Initials. If
you want to use them you have to be prepared to use them sparingly and put up with
some frustration. If you want to design or adapt them you have to accept limitations
on what you can achieve, or be willing to do a lot of extra work to make perfect
curves and minimize points in order to produce characters with the look you want at
acceptable complexity. There are some tricks which may help. For the designer one
trick is to split a Decorative Initials font into two fonts, each with half the
characters. This keeps the total memory usage of the font down to a better level.
With a few of our fonts (Campobello, Golgotha, Maidens) this proved to be the only
way to make the fonts workable. A good trick for the frustrated user is to use a
powerful art program like Photoshop to turn the individual characters you want to
use into TIFF or JPEG files for insertion into desktop publishing
documents, thereby bypassing the complexity of the actual font. In addition,
as a general design guideline it is better not to overuse decorative initials. They
were originally intended to be used once per page, and if you are using them more often
than just to start each paragraph they will start to make your pages look over done.

lthough Decorative
Initials fonts are limited - like all fonts - to two colors, there are some creative
things you can do with them to make them more like the medieval initials from which
they originate. Most of these suggestions assume that you have some sort of color
printer available to you or are preparing your document for viewing on a color
computer screen. The simplest option, and one which will work in almost any word
processing program, is to do the decorative initials in a different color from the
main text. The combination of a strong red initial with standard black text is quite
striking and frequently used in religious pamphlets and event programs. A more
advanced technique is to place the characters you need in a pain program like
Photoshop and then color individual elements of the character appropriately, as
demonstrated by the initials accompanying this article. The disadvantage of this
technique is that you have to place the initials as art rather than as text, but many
word processing programs and desktop publishing programs handle this fairly well. And
as you can see it works quite well in HTML. Be creative with Decorative Initials,
but don't go overboard with color. These characters are already visually complex
and if you make them too colorful they may become distracting or confusing so that
the reader just filters them out.

f you choose not to
use an actual decorative initials font, you can still create decorative initials of
your own if you have some good art to work with by superimposing type on an art
background. Small illustrations with dark colors of relatively uniform intensity
work best as backgrounds, and you should pick a relatively bold font with clear,
heavy strokes to superimpose. The art you choose should be not be so detailed that
it loses all meaning in a small size, and be sure the color of the type contrast
strongly with all the colors in the background. Take care to make sure that none of
the key figures in the art background are obscured by the type. To use this
technique and keep it simple for guaranteed success you can use a simple square
filled with a nice texture as your background. Another option is to use artwork to
fill a character on a contrasting background - a technique favored by many Art
Nouveau designers. These methods can produce some impressive results if you have the
right source materials to work with.

hile Decorative
Initials are traditionally most commonly associated with the look of medieval manuscripts
or early printed books, their durability is demonstrated in the ways that the concept has been
creatively revisited by designers in other eras. Arts and Crafts designers, Art Nouveau designers,
Psychedelic poster artists and many others have adapted the concept of the decorative initial
to their unique and sometimes very modern themes. Decorative initials also work extraordinarily
well on the web. It's easy enough to incorporate them in a HTML document to produce a result
which is as striking as an illuminated manuscript but in an entirely modern format. Take a look at the source
for this page to see how to make your initials fit right with your text paragraphs.

ecorative Initials
can be challenging and frustrating to work with, but they are one of the best ways
to add a unique or antique look to your documents. Use them sparingly and creatively and don't
be profligate with them. If you use them well they may add just the touch of style you're looking for.

For more information about Initials fonts from the Scriptorium,
click here: INITIALS